YOUR AD HERE »

Alleys: Aspen’s other side

Naomi Havlen
Timeworn buildings line many Aspen alleys. Aspen Times photo/Paul Conrad.
ALL |

My first venture into an Aspen alley was on my first day in town – the day I visited for a job interview.A friend and I poked around town admiring what all tourists see when they pass through Aspen: pedestrian malls, manicured lawns with summer flowers, well-maintained buildings that date to the 1800s.

After my interview, the newspaper editor with whom I met walked me out the back door and through the alley to meet my friend. “This is Aspen’s underbelly,” he said with a chuckle, adding, “it’s what tourists don’t see.”Five years later, I know exactly what that editor meant. Visitors don’t go cruising through the streets that cut the city’s blocks into halves. But if they did, they might discover a different side to this resort town.

In the alleys, Aspen’s four-star meals are humbled by the noxious odors coming out of restaurant grease traps; garbage cans and Dumpsters are locked tight to restrict prying paws; and sheets of dirty ice linger from November through March.Alleys are where cooks and dishwashers take smoke breaks. They’re where The Thrift Shop keeps a Dumpster of castaways. And they’re a whole lot more.



Just north of Hyman Avenue, between Mill and Galena streets on a second-floor balcony, is Annette Docimo’s “Back Alley Gallery.” Follow the steps up and you’ll find a colorful array of glass artwork from various artists.On Hopkins Avenue, behind Susie’s consignment shop, a yellow building abuts the alley. “I like the quiet back here,” said Karen Hayes one recent morning, while working at Susie’s on the Alley, which sells consignment housewares. “We tell customers that this shop is back here, but sometimes people do wander down the alley and find us.”

On the same morning, cooks in white coats supervise produce deliveries, and a box piled high with red onions is carried into Blue Maize. Kemosabe’s shopkeepers, all wearing cowboy hats, stand behind the shop discussing building maintenance. Joanne Post and Christine Kienast sort through mountains of donations behind The Thrift Shop.




“It’s always like this at this time of year,” said Post, noting that spring cleaning means heaps of hand-me-downs for the local thrift shop. “I should be doing this at my house, but instead I’m doing it here.”The best items are kept for the Thrift Shop to sell, with proceeds going to local charities. Other items are shipped off to shops in Grand Junction, Paonia or downvalley.

And while it’s quiet in downtown Aspen’s alleys, it’s even quieter in the West End. Alleys, often gravel, cut most of these residential blocks in half, creating parking spots and views over fences into back yards.The Victorians and pseudo-Victorians in the West End are resplendent with groomed lawns and multicolored flowers facing the street, but it’s a different world on the alleys. Shacks dating back to Aspen’s mining days lean gracefully in back yards, their windows overgrown with vines and flowering trees.

Some back yards are blanketed with dandelions, others have professionally potted flower arrangements. Foundations are being poured for new homes, and small dogs yap from behind fences. There are quirky weathervanes, and a basketball hoop with its backboard painted mint green to match the house to which it’s connected.

Marie Gardiner has been the seamstress at Sew and Sew, on the alley between Monarch and Aspen streets, north of Bleeker, for five years. The small building with a birdhouse nailed to its front wall was once a miner’s shack.”I have to advertise, or people would never find me because I’m not in a visible location,” Gardiner said. “But it’s beautiful here, Mary Hayes has a garden across the way, it’s close to downtown and I like little alleys.”

Naomi Havlen’s e-mail address is nhavlen@aspentimes.com